jsnrocks

I wanted to make a dA journal on this for old times sake. Lately I've been doing a lot more thinking. About who I am, what I like, what my plans are, and how all of that affects what I make. This journal is going to be the conclusion to all of these thoughts. I put it on this platform because DeviantArt is the first place where I realized that I had an opportunity to grow as an artist and this platform is where I realized I could eventually have a career making art. It cannot be understated the influence this site had on my growth over the years.

But enough about that, I'm here to spill the beans. The beans say this: I do not enjoy the process of drawing, nor do I enjoy the process of learning to draw.

"But how are you going to be a professional artist if you hate drawing?"

Let me explain. I was watching a video about the Great Wave, a Japanese painting and lithograph from the Edo period of Japan. I was watching closely with the intent of learning to be more mindful when I draw and make art, as I seriously want to improve no matter how much I say I hate drawing. The video explains how at age 60, the painter of the Great Wave commonly known as Hokusai had to completely relearn how to draw because he was struck by lightning. He then was quoted a decade later saying, "From the age of 6 I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things. When I was 50 I had published a universe of designs. But all I have done before the age of 70 is not worth bothering with. At 75 I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am 80 you will see real progress. At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvelous artist. At 110, everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before. To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age. I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign myself 'The Old Man Mad About Drawing."

This quote shook me, because I had this idea that when I got old I wouldn't be drawing anymore. Like I would be in too much pain or something. I don't know, thinking back on it it really just feels like I was just using old age as an excuse not to draw. But I realized something, He really likes drawing. And that made me wonder when I stopped liking the process of drawing. Have I become too distracted with non art related subjects and distractions? Why does my muse not sing like his did? And I came to the conclusion that lately I've been viewing art not as an extension of who I am, not even as a tool to try and figure it out. I take art too lightly. From the age of 17 I've only been viewing art as a method to make money lazily doing what I want. That's not what art should be to an artist. At least not in my opinion. Artists are people who have the ability to take a picture of their meaning of life and translate it through their mediums of choice. It's much more complex than learning how to draw the perfect person, how foreshortening and perspective work, and "when will I find my art style?"

To me art is about being dedicated to the idea that you and your work are one and the same, telling a story and living through time as it goes on.

This probably sounds really corny, because I'm 23 years old and I only do art in my free time while I attempt to make a business of it. I work at a grocery store and I still live with my mom. But the reason I find myself in the situations I do, and why I hate myself, my art, and my life, is because I don't enjoy anything. I threw away the creative expression in my art in order to find ways to make it more commercial. And when I didn't like how it looked, I didn't put it out there, and I sat back wondering why no one ever looked my way as a customer. I thought, "Maybe there is something else, maybe its not me." Instead of being patient and just going with the flow and enjoying my creative process. I kept having this thought. "I need to get good now. I need to get money now. I need to live off of my art now." As opposed to, "I like how this looks, I want to get better at this, This subject is difficult but rewarding to get through."

I say all this to say that I want to learn to love my art. I want to use it not solely as a means to make money, but to figure myself out a bit more. I want to make things that resonate with people, I want to inspire, and I want to look forward to every pencil stroke I make.

I have a couple goals I've set for myself before I turn 24, and I'd like to complete them. I'd also like to participate in artist spheres more actively, and make new friends that are artists that can relate with my goals and dreams.

I don't like how my life is, but if it's for the sake of drawing, I'll go through hell for it. If your actually read this and especially if you got this far, I appreciate you, if you're an artist, I hope I inspired you to want to draw, and if not, I hope I provided you some insight on why art is so important, at least to me.

Thank you for reading, Jasen "JSRJ" Roby

Today I tried to fix my bike. I almost had it, but I failed. I wallowed in ym sadness by watching a couple episodes of one piece, then I went to the store to grab some snacks. while I was there I almost bought a notebook. It was 100 pages and it was Purple. Exactly what I needed.

I bought 's course on digital art because I wanted to improve, but I had been having trouble taking the steps to start. Taking notes on paper is boring but for me personally, I'd rather write it out by hand then type it. It doesn't feel like I'm learning anything otherwise.

Anyway while I was about to check out I realized I had left my wallet at home so I had to walk back home from my local Walgreens to get my wallet and come back. But when I came back the store was temporarily closed because there was a crazy customer who was getting really feisty with the security guard. She exclaimed that she had a concealed carried weapon and then the police were called. It just so happened that if I hadn't left my wallet at home, I wouldnt have ended up having to wait outside of Walgreens for 30 minutes to an hour for them to open up again so I could finish my purchase.

Once I got my snacks and my notebook I decided it was finally time to start the course. So I did what the cubebrush discord and forums recommended and watched Term 7's video on enhanced learning first, and I think I took pretty good notes.

One thing I'll say though is that although I prefer writing my notes, It's definitely convenient to have a digital copy of my notes, so I planned on copying my notes and reformatting them in notepad so I can always have access to them.

I should mention, the way this course is typically accessed is through dropbox, but I thought that dropbox wasn't working for me so I downloaded and organized all of the content manually. It took half a day. (9/15 i think it was.) At least now I don't need internet access to use it though. WooHoo : D!

I decided that I want to do Drawabox as well, and I think I want to do them both side by side.

I like to think of it as if I'm going back to college and These courses and programs are the classes i enrolled in. Although I'd only have two classes. DART101 (Art School by Marc Brunet) and ART101 (Drawabox by Uncomfortable). But alongside those I have at least 15 book I've bought on Amazon, and I also tend to listen to audiobooks when I work the morning shift at work. The audiobooks tend to be more focused on my mindset and such rather than exclusively art.

I want to keep doing this, and slowly move my mindset from an aspirational loser to someone who is set and determined. I decided I want to make art my living, and not Just that. I'm gonna be the Manga King, so I need to work extra hard to make that happen, and cut out things that don't engage my creativity.

Fixing my bike, riding my skateboard, learning the bass guitar, those are some of my favorite hobbies because when I'm doing them, I can feel myself having fun without the pressure of needing to put something out there. It's a great destresser. I like anime, but lately I've been watching only One PIece. It's so damn long that I made a full commitment to it and only it, the only exception being SpyxFamily and Tokyo Revengers.

If I had more time on my hands I'd probably try to pick up learning Japanese again. But Now that I have these courses I need to be more focused on my studies and work diligently.

Marc himself said that this course Ideally would be finished in 2 years, but I'm gonna do it in 6 months. And even if I can't I'm not gonna stop until it's done and I understand everything he talks about.

Thanks for reading:

-JSN

copied from my recent post bc this is a journal and I want ppl to read it.

"Currently in the house I live in, my water heater's pilot is out. My house is pretty old and the basement is flooded, so for right now lighting the pilot wont work anyways. I'm not gonna lie, without hot water I found it hard to take a shower today. So as I stepped in the cold shower I was very apprehensive because although I've taken cold showers in the past, It's been over a year since I've had a really cold shower and showered all the way through and any attempts since then have been met with a rewarding hot water spray at the end.

I did not have the luxury of such a reward at this time, nevertheless I needed to shower. So I hopped in. It was very cold. Shocking, I know. I tilted the shower head towards the floor as low as it would go, and stood at the back. I wet my hands and head, and the bar of soap I was using, and tried to clean myself that way, but I knew that doing this would just waste time and it wouldn't properly clean me, so I said to myself, "Jasen, you're being a coward. You have dreams that go way beyond being ordinary, You're trying to aim for a very unstable lifestyle, and achieve things that lots only just dream of. But you're too scared to take a cold shower once in a while?" That snapped me out of it, and as the Gurren Lagann theme song was playing on my phone in the background, I jumped into the cold water headfirst. It was the first time I've had a cold shower with no hot water in over a year, and it was awful, but I did it.

I find that a lot of the things I need to do to be a professional artist, drawing included, are often these really simple tasks that are just a bit out of my comfort zone. Imagine, if you will, a giant staircase. A HUGE staircase that goes higher than you can imagine, and lower than you'd like to think. Now imagine each individual stair is just a bit too tall for you to climb up. Maybe you need a running start, maybe you just need to concentrate on jumping higher, but whatever it is, where you are now isn't going to get you there. Taking that cold shower today, for me, was like climbing another step towards my path of becoming a more self reliant person, and becoming someone who is willing to do the hard things to improve a bit more.

Full Disclosure: I did not do much drawing today, I stared at the white on my tablet and froze. I watched a video on How to draw the head using the Loomis Method. But then I decided to make a schedule to organize and balance my studies, drawing, and full time job. I have schedules for each day, and I have a schedule prepared for when I work at 7 in the morning, and then I work at 2 in the afternoon. I want to start uploading more art here, not just portfolio pieces. When I upload my next drawing here, that's when the new update will roll out. But back to the topic, with a schedule to stick to, as well as a study plan, I have the proper organization needed to be able to efficiently improve my art. As well, I have decided the basic plot and story of my comic, which only has the working title "Kids on Wheels". I decided that I want to be living on my own in 2023, so I'm going to work extra hard to improve my art to a level where I can at least freelance effectively. I also am once again reminding people that I haven't raised my commission prices yet, but that they will be getting a price increase Sometime before my 23rd birthday, which is October 28th. anyone unfamiliar with my current prices, I'll post the chart below. it's 3 years old, so I think a bump is due soon.

One other thing I think I'm gonna do is change the URL again. its probably not the best idea considering all the re-ups and redos the website has gone through since 2019, when I first published it, but I don't really think Jasen's Vision is what I want to be known as. I really like Made by JSN. so much so that I've already update my handles on my social medias to it. All except DeviantArt, which won't let me change my name again for another 6 months. But that's not relevant. I'm going to retire my current business email when I update my commission prices, which will also be when the update for the website rolls out. Everything will be synced. To celebrate my 23rd birthday I'm gonna do an All day stream on my twitch. I'll plan everything out and then make another post detailing things, but I do have quite a bit of stuff planned for my birthday as you can probably tell.

Nevertheless, I'm still open to taking commissions. As previously mentioned they'll be posted at the bottom of this blog post. You can find my Terms of Service on my Services Page, which is also where I'll keep my updated commissions prices sheet once that is finished.

That is all I wanted to say. This post is getting long, so I'll wrap it up here. Thanks for reading!

-jsn

"

when i chose to forego @purplejasen for this name i sort of settled. i forgot that i could just not change my name and save it for when i have a name i really want. but its fine, bc i dont treat deviantart like my other socials anyway. deviantart is less professional, more fun for me.

Right now I like how MADEBYJSN feels so I have been going with that, opting for JSN if at all possible. The thing is when I think about these sort of brand changes it gets so hard to ignore the call to update all my socials and my website instead of just make art. I get so excited when I think "man that layout looks so cool" when I could be saying, "man i really outdid myself on this piece I did." or "man, that page kicked my ass but it was worth it." It's a problem that I attribute to lack of self discipline and procrastination that makes me feel productive. That is a weird phrase, but basically, I'm tricking myself into not drawing by focusing on something thats "productive". In this case making my website was totally uncalled for because I didn't even have that much art I wanted to really change as far as important stuff goes. It was mostly just changing the layout and theme of the website. no art update, I still haven't made a commission prices sheet for 2022 (That's priority #1 rn), I just keep making these dumb changes that dont mean anything. I worked on that website for like 2, 3 hours, and I'm not anywhere closer to being a better artist for it. My priorities are fucked rn.

I think that the best solution is to just stop thinking about my handles and stuff. I have always sort of had this obsession with appearing like an OG when i am on a platform or in a videogame, hence why I tend to go for shorter names if possible, but its all a front because its not like I can trick people into thinking I joined earlier than I did, but in trying to do so, I come off as a poser or a tryhard. And usually in any case, all i do is waste time on these platforms anyway. If I stopped thinking about it, I'd be able to focus on the parts of my brand that really matter.

Its time to stop treating art like a hobby. I'm actually gonna try now.

I haven't made a proper journal at least since the switch to eclipse if not earlier. I remember I was always on DeviantArt in my free time from 2014-2016. Those were genuinely some of the most fun points of my life. Even if I didn't know what I was doing, I has this super burning drive to always improve my art. Forgive me but im probably just going to ramble.

Right now, drawing is boring. It's not as fun as when I was a kid. Even if I'm doing something for a commission like the one I posted a few days ago, I'm not inspired enough to just constantly draw like I used to be, its kind of crazy considering how much I used to spam peoples watch notifications lmao. Maybe its the style I'm going for, maybe I'm just lazy.

I made this DeviantArt account the September that I started high school, I've had previous accounts, but they're barren because I didn't have reliable internet access and I couldn't post online because I didn't know how lmao. I remember in the early times of my account there were times when I didn't have internet access at all but i still had the pc with mspaint. id draw on the pc and use a flash drive to bring it to school and upload it from the school computers. a lot of the drawings made in mspaint were made like this and even though it was complicated, and i would sometimes get in trouble for not using the school computers for assignments, i still had a lot of fun. I just enjoyed drawing and putting it out there.

That was amplified when I got my first drawing tablet. I still remember Winter Break of 2015. That was one of the highlights of my life. I didn't have a job because I had just turned 16 and hadn't started looking yet, and I got my first drawing tablet for Christmas. Undertale was still a big thing at the time too so I'd listen to Undertale music and stay up all night drawing and playing video games, then id sleep through the day. It was really just my love of this stuff that kept me going and I also had online friends that felt the same. I don't know though, it feels like lately everything im doing feels uninspired and stagnant. I was going through some vocaloid classics while reading a manga online, and the art reminded me of how much i used to love drawing. It was ion a kind of anime/painterly style. i dont know if im explaining it properly, anyway here's the video. This art sort of reminded me of the style i was leaning toward back in that point. I've always had a bias for early-mid 2000s anime styles. I dont know where I got it from now that i think about it.

I hate the new journal box, it feels so boring. the old one was better

maybe im just high on nostalgia, its not like switching back to paint tool sai will make deviantart eclipse go away or delete the existence of social media.

i want to rtant longer but im just not feeling it like i used to. this p[lace feels too clean, too perfect. i dont feel like theres any place i can properly be who i want, or if i can ever be who i once was. I think ive grown a lot from the time i made this account, ive made friends, found other hobbies and interests, and without a doubt ive gotten better at art, but right now it feels like im not living up to my potential, im to stretched out and i dont know what i really wanna do.

itd be ideal if i could just be on here and youtube and never post to the big social medias again. i dont really like those places that much.

but nowadays this place isnt much better. it doesnt feel alive anymore.

sigh

i think im gonna go to bed now...